In first-quarter 2013, mobile phone shipments grew 12% year-on-year (YoY) to an estimated 405 million handsets, according to market analyst firm ABI Research’s Mobile Handset Markets database service. However, this was due to the continued strong growth of smartphone, up 38% to 197 million handsets, a record penetration of 49% of all mobile phone handset shipments). In contrast, feature-phone shipments fell by 5.2%.
“Worldwide handset and smartphone shipments exhibited classic Q1 softness,” says senior analyst Michael Morgan. “Samsung accomplished strong smartphone growth while Apple dismissed a troubling mix of slowed growth and declining margins as a sign that the older iPhone 4S was in high demand,” he adds.
Nokia handset shipments plummeted to 62 million in Q1, with smartphone shipments at a 5-year low of 6.1 million. Considering market and OEM-specific conditions, BlackBerry delivered a respectable 6 million shipments, including 1 million coming from the launch of BlackBerry 10-based devices. Despite HTC’s well-designed ONE devices, shipments continued to decline 37% YoY to 4.8 million. LG continued its revival with 10.3 million smartphone shipments and 16.2 million handset shipments.
“The last time a major smartphone OEM showed a trend of decreasing margins combined with falling ASPs and slowing growth, BlackBerry was still on the favorable side of a large market share and revenue drop,” says senior practice director Jeff Orr. “With major product announcements teased for Q3, Apple risks falling behind the innovation curve unless the next iPhone is more revolutionary than evolutionary,” he reckons.
